First all-civilian crew launched to orbit aboard SpaceX rocket ship

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 15 (Reuters) – A billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens chosen to join him blasted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket ship and soared into orbit, the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space.

The quartet of amateur astronauts, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc (FOUR.N), Jared Isaacman, lifted off just before sunset from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A SpaceX webcast of the launch showed Isaacman, 38, and his crewmates – Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 – strapped into the pressurized cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, wearing their helmeted black-and-white flight suits.

Read the full article here.

Image credit: REUTERS/Steve Nesius

NASA Space Grant Launches High Altitude Student Platform!

HASP launched this morning with student experiments from across the country. Watch the livestream across multiple video streams.

Flight Stream #1: https://www.youtube.com/c/LouisianaSpaceGrant/live
Flight Stream #2: https://www.youtube.com/user/LaACESProgram/live
CSBF Tower Cam: https://video.ibm.com/channel/nasa-educational?fbclid=IwAR2s0d0kHG1-Kfx9s6P4RUwVGdCJAi4EESi-vNf4bpMbHAZwfENoM5U84C0

 

Check out Louisiana Space Grant’s detailed Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/LaSPACEandEPSCoR/photos/a.595030580508878/6399567483388463/

Learn more about the HASP program: https://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp/

 

Montana Space Grant Intern – Instructor at Earth & Space Science Summer Camp

Throwback Thursday to one cool news article from this summer!

 

BOZEMAN — For five of the last six years, middle schoolers from across the state have gathered at Montana State University in the name of science and exploration.

They come to campus with curiosity in their minds and spend five days at the MSU Explore: Earth and Space Science Camp in search of answers. Most leave with more than just that, namely the idea college is possible and their futures are bright.

The camp, hosted by MSU Academic Technology and Outreach, aims to engage students from underserved communities in hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and inspire them to go to college and pursue degrees in those subjects. This year’s camp was held July 11-16 on the MSU campus. Last year’s camp was canceled due to the pandemic.

 

Read the full article here.

NASA Puerto Rico Space Grant Supported Student Team Sends Satellite to Space

After several years of hard work, a group of Puerto Rico students aim to see the launch of the first Puerto Rican-made satellite into space.

The group from the School of Engineering of the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, Bayamón campus, have provided their CubeSat NanoRocks-2 project, known as PR-CuNaR2, to NASA to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket when it looks to launch from Kennedy Space Center early Saturday morning.

The launch from KSC’s Launch Complex-39A is slated for 3:37 a.m. with a backup window of Sunday at 3:14 a.m.

This satellite is part of a scientific investigation by the university that began in 2013 with the design and construction prototype.

 

Read the full article here.

 

New Mexico Space Grant Team Launches Payload Experiments on NASA’s RockOn! Mission

LAS CRUCES – A payload experiment from New Mexico State University’s Atomic Aggies flew nearly 70 miles above Earth on NASA’s Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket as part of the RockOn! mission.

The New Mexico Space Grant Consortium invited the Atomic Aggies to participate in the mission which was sponsored by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium and NASA. The mission was part of the first-ever virtual rocket-building workshops with over 100 participants.

Read the full article here.

 

Author Credit:

Vladimir Avina
New Mexico State University
Image Credit:
A. Jimenez

PAGE APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF NASA WV SPACE GRANT CONSORTIUM, NASA WV EPSCOR

Page has served as the associate vice president for creative and scholarly activities at WVU since 2013, and as a board representative for the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium and EPSCoR for eight years. She will continue to serve as associate vice president and will be replaced on the board by Duncan Lorimer, professor of physics and associate dean for research in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

“I am excited to step into this role for our state and to continue to build on Dr. Jaridi’s work,” Page said. “It is certainly true in this case that he is a hard act to follow, but I look forward to working with everyone to continue to build on our successes.”

Read the full article here.

Read the “Meet the Director” page here.

 

Author Credit:

Story by Adrianne Uphold and Candy Cordwell

Image Credit: Candy Cordwell, #WVSGC

Scientists Figure out how the Asteroid Belt Attacked the Dinosaurs

How do you track an asteroid that hit the Earth over 60 million years ago?  By using a combination of geology and computer simulations, at least according to a team of scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).  Those methods might have let them solve a long-standing mystery of both archeology and astronomy – where did the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs come from?

The fact that an asteroid impact was the catastrophe that finally killed the dinosaurs is now widely accepted in scientific circles.  Now known as the “Chicxulub event”, it was named after the 145 km wide crater in the Yucatan peninsula that the 10 km wide asteroid caused when it impacted the planet about 66 million years ago.

 

Read the full article here.

Author: Andy Tomaswick

 

 

Six Habits of Effective Interns

Thousands of students apply for NASA internships every session and a few hundred of them are selected to support NASA missions each session. There are various reasons why a student may be selected for an internship at NASA. The vast majority of interns who are selected achieve their academic success by developing and applying effective work and study habits. For students seeking a NASA internship, we say to keep going, develop new habits like the ones below, and apply what you know to internship projects that align with your career interests. Here are six effective habits of successful interns at NASA that you can aim for today:

1. Set goals for yourself

Once a month take some time out of your busy schedule to set some goals. These can be goals about your career, internship, or projects.

 

Some good examples of goals are:

  • Take good detail notes
  • Set an hour to check in with your mentor
  • Attend one center event per month
  • Become comfortable with virtual platforms
  • Set some time for training materials each week
  • Learn a new skill about your mission

 

Read the other 5 Habits in the full article here.

Be sure to reach out to your state’s Space Grant Consortium to ask how they may be able to support you!

 

Ride Along With Juno Past Ganymede And Jupiter

Ride along with Juno

The Juno spacecraft made its most recent flyby of the giant planet Jupiter on June 8, 2021. Shortly before its closest point to Jupiter – the 34th of the mission, or perijove 34 – Juno flew closer to Jupiter’s large moon Ganymede than any spacecraft has in more than two decades. On July 14, NASA released the beautiful video above. It lets you ride along with the Juno spacecraft on this most recent sweep past Ganymede and Jupiter. The video is gorgeous and evocative. Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said in a statement:

The animation shows just how beautiful deep space exploration can be. It’s a way for people to imagine exploring our solar system firsthand by seeing what it would be like to be orbiting Jupiter and flying past one of its icy moons.

Read the full article here.

Author: Deborah Byrd

Image Credit: NASA JPL

 

Blue Origin will fly female aviator Wally Funk, one of the Mercury 13, on 1st crewed launch

Aviator Wally Funk wanted to be an astronaut in the earliest days of spaceflight. Sixty years later, on July 20, she’ll finally go to space with Blue Origin.

Funk was one of 13 female aviators later dubbed the Mercury 13 who, in 1961, passed all the exams necessary for admission to NASA’s astronaut corps and lobbied the federal government to send women into space. NASA and Congress demurred and women were excluded from becoming U.S. astronauts for more than a decade; Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space in 1983.

But, if all goes according to plan, in just three weeks, Funk will spend four minutes beyond the bounds of gravity. “I’ll love every second of it,” Funk said of her flight in a video released by Blue Origin. “I can hardly wait.”

 

Read the full article on Wally funk here.

Author: Meghan Bartels

 

Live Updates:

Blue Origin will launch its first crewed mission on its New Shepard rocket July 20 to fly its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and three other passengers to suborbital space and back. Liftoff is set for 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas and will launch Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Mercury 13 and aviation pioneer Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemon.

Space.com will bring you all the latest updates of Blue Origin’s First Human Flight here.

Authors: Meghan Bartels & Space.com Staff